Mass Spectrometry in Solar System Exploration

Paul V. Johnson, Luther W. Beegle, and Isik Kanik 

Mass Spectrometry Handbook,Yust Edition. Edited by Mike S. Lee. 

Spacecraft simultaneously in the Jovian system. Additionally, the decadal survey recommended that NASA should select its fourth mission in the New Frontiers program from among the following mission concepts Comet Surface Sample Return, Lunar South Pole Aiken Basin Sample Return, Saturn probe, Trojan Tour and Rendezvous, and Venus In Situ Explorer. 

In addition to the mass spectrometer itself, there are a number of instrument components that are required to enable mass spectrometric analysis on/at another solar system body. In the case of solid samples (rock, soil, or ice), sampling systems (e.g., pyrolysis, laser abla-tion/desorption, or liquid extraction) are required to extract chemical compounds of interest [14]. After sampling is accomplished, compounds of interest can be preseparated using techniques such as gas chromatography (GC), which serve to improve selectivity and hence better identification of compounds in the analysis. Such gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) systems have been successfully deployed in the past on a variety of solar system exploration missions. 

To date, a number of articles have discussed the use of mass spectrometry (MS) for space applications [1,ISIS]. In this chapter, our objective is to give a comprehensive and up-to-date review of various MS instruments and the complementary GCs that have been employed in the past or ongoing planetary missions. In Section 17.3, we discuss the application of GCs in solar system exploration followed by a chronological introduction to spaceflight mass spectrometers employed in major planetary missions (see the summary in Table 17.1). 

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